The memoranda or position paper on the petition filed by Bacolod mayoralty candidate Jude Thaddeus Sayson asking the Commission to declare his namesake, Julius Sayson, as a nuisance candidate was submitted last week to the Commission on Elections, his lawyer Crystal Vega said yesterday.

Vega said they were required to submit their memoranda 10 days after the preliminary conference in Manila on October 22.

In their memoranda, they stated that Vice Mayor Sayson is running for mayor of Bacolod City and that they discovered that Julius Sayson also filed his certificate of candidacy for the same position, she said.

They also stated the grounds for a candidate to be declared a nuisance candidate and related them to the allegation against Julius, who had filed a statement of withdrawal later.

She also said that Julius Sayson and his counsel failed to show up at the preliminary conference in COMELEC Manila on October 22.

Bacolod Election Officer Mavil Majarucon-Sia said they hope the case will be resolved by the First Division of the COMELEC at least 15 days before the December 21 deadline.

She said Julius Sayson will then be given 10 days to appeal the decision to the COMELEC en banc, before it becomes final, and has to be resolved on the first week of December so there will be enough time, she added.

Majarucon-Sia said COMELEC is targeting December 21 for printing the ballots, and that they hope COMELEC will resolve the case before the deadline.

Meanwhile, Majarucon-Sia also said the Election Registration Board will conduct a hearing on November 19 on applications of new voters received by the COMELEC Bacolod Office from October 1 to 31.

After the ERB hearing, the list of voters will undergo another cleansing process, she said.

She also said they cannot finalize the list yet since they are waiting for reports from the Civil Registrar’s Office about voters who have already died so their names can be deleted from their records.

From time to time, they will be receiving documents from COMELEC Manila in relation to voters with multiple entries detected by the Automated Fingerprint Integrated System, she said.

The system can detect if a person has multiple listings based on his or her fingerprints, she said.

They will then determine whether the person’s name should be deleted or retained in their record after checking his or her history, where he or she was last registered, and his last activities, she added.

The ERB is composed of herself as election officer, City Treasurer Annabelle Badajos and Bacolod Schools Division Superintendent Gemma Ledesma, she also said.*CGS

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